


Undone (Light Cuts Both Ways--The Shattered But Unbroken Remix)

by Erinya



Category: World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4213791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinya/pseuds/Erinya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They must find a way to wait.  For justice; for faith; for a path through the limitless darkness that lives deep beneath the earth, and in all the hollow spaces in their hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undone (Light Cuts Both Ways--The Shattered But Unbroken Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Undone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566188) by [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  No safe stories. All previous remixes are tagged as Remix.
> 
> Fandoms include:  
> DCU (Comics)  
> Hellblazer  
> Dragon Age  
> Loveless  
> World of Warcraft  
> Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn  
> Xenosaga

_“The shape of many Diamonds is so irregular, that it is necessary to remove pieces of considerable magnitude in order to bring them to a form proper for cutting....The method of splitting is made a great mystery; thus much, however, may be mentioned, that when the direction in which the section is to be made has been determined on, it is marked by a very fine line, cut by the point of another Diamond.”_

\--Lewis Feuchtwanger, “A Treatise on Gems”

* * *

 

The Scarred Vale.  Standing at the railing of the Summer Terrace, Jaina tried to remember it as it had been: the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, vista of breathtaking beauty, haven of idyllic peace.  She tried to call up the lost brilliance of the colors, yellow leaves and red, and the flash of sunlight on clear water; the scent of the ever-blooming plum trees drifting on the breeze; the plaintive sound of Pandaren flutes mingling with the birdsong that floated up to the Terrace from the valley below.

Mage though she was, visualization skills trained into second nature long ago, it was no good.  Even when she closed her eyes, she could only see the heartbreaking desolation that spread before her.  The Sha had taken all.  Nothing flowered there, nothing sang; the perpetual blossoms had been stripped away by the wind that now whistled across barren stone and through blasted branches, rattling the few dry and blackened leaves still clinging there.  It carried the all-too-familiar scent of scorched earth and decay, a miasma of death that never quite dissipated.

That was all Garrosh Hellscream had left them in his quest for ultimate power.  Death and loss and destruction.  Damage that could never be undone.

It was truly the Vale of Eternal Sorrows now.

_And Theramore...Theramore is gone forever._  Her refuge, all she had built and placed her hopes in, was reduced to rubble and scarred ground; those who had trusted her to protect them were dead and scattered.  

Jaina’s hands clenched on the railing, its red-painted wood rough against her palms, her knuckles whitening.

Death and loss and destruction...and anger.  That was something she still had left.  The rage was bitter, blinding, burning like acid in the back of her throat; but sometimes, like now, it felt like the only thing holding her together. She clutched it like a lifeline, hoping it would lead her forward.

_ Once, I worked for peace.  I believed in it.  And this is all my work has come to. _

“How're you holding up, Lady Proudmoore?”

Jaina started, her fingers flexing spasmodically.  Lost in her grim musings, she hadn’t heard anyone approach.  She turned to find the Queen of the Dwarves regarding her, arms crossed, short legs planted wide, gaze knowing and dark with...sympathy?

Moira Thaurissian was by no means Jaina’s friend, let alone her confidant; but these days, those she could call her friends were few and hard to find, and sympathy more difficult to recognize.

“This trial is a waste of time.”  The words burst from her, low and raw.  “We all know what that monster did.”

“Aye,” Moira said softly.  “Death’s too good for him, if you ask me.”

“At least if he were dead, it would be over.”

Moira eyed her, silent for a long minute.  Finally, she said, “You’re bleeding.  Let me see your hand.”

Jaina glanced down, and found that she _was_ bleeding.  She had gripped the railing so hard that a splinter had worked its way deep into her skin.  She hadn’t noticed the pain until now.

Moira frowned over her torn palm, murmuring a few words.  Jaina stared at her as the wound sealed and the pain abated; she had forgotten that Moira was a priest.  The dwarven queen’s arts were mostly those of the shadow disciplines, as was the tradition of the Dark Iron clan she had married into; but she could heal a little, too.  The Light always cut both ways.

“Thank you,” Jaina said, closing her fist to hide the blood, and tried to find a smile.  It almost hurt as much as the splinter had; she could not remember the last time she had smiled thus, in friendship offered, and she hoped that Moira would see the intent behind what felt more like a grimace.

The dwarf nodded, once. Even her gestures were terse.  “Why don’t you come inside with me, lass?  You look like you could use a drink.”

 

*      *     *

 

At the bar in the Golden Lantern, Moira handed Jaina a goblet of plum wine, lifting her pint of Pandaren brew with an ironic eyebrow.  “To victory,” she said, somber as a funeral; Jaina felt her own mouth twist as she returned the toast.

“To justice,” she said. The word was bitter on her tongue, though the wine was thick and sweet.

“I heard what you said to your King,” Moira said, and Jaina jerked her head up in surprise.  “Is justice really all you seek, Jaina Proudmoore of the Kirin Tor?”

Jaina heard and noted the distinction, filed it away for later: _your King_ , not _the King_.  Moira might have been Magni’s daughter, but she was a Dark Iron at heart, even still.  She kept her voice cool.  “I did not intend those words for any ears but Varian’s.”  But Moira simply looked at her--a long, shrewd glance, unnerving in its directness--and Jaina heard herself saying, “We should have taken the city when we could.  It was our best chance to crush them, once and for all.”

“Aye, we could have taken Orgrimmar.  But at what price?  How many more would we have lost?”

“Less than we’ll lose in the next war,” Jaina shot back automatically, but she thought suddenly of Moira’s people, fallen in one deadly moment to Blackfuse's Ironstar, and wished she’d bitten her tongue.

“Ah,” Moira said.  “But there will always be a next war.  You can lay waste to the Horde, but a new power will always rise to take its place.  You cannot put an end to war with an act of war.”

“Then what can I do?”  Her own voice rang shrill and ragged in her ears.  ”Stay my hand?  Make peace?  I have tried peace!  And if there is one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that the Horde can’t be trusted to keep it.”  She pushed her glass away, too hard; it rocketed off the bar, shattering on the stone floor.  Jaina looked down at it blankly.  An image rose in her mind, unbidden:  Thrall’s face, tight with strain as he called upon the elements to halt a wave of death bearing down upon his people’s city.

She had sent that wave, and hardened her heart to the betrayal and pain that showed stark in his eyes when he shouted at her to stop it; and he knew as well as she did that the blast of arcane energy she aimed at him was meant to kill.

But Thrall had been her friend, once.  They had shared the same naive and hopeless dream of peace between the Alliance and the Horde.

Thrall had been her friend, and she had tried to kill him.

“You could seek peace,” Moira said calmly.  “Or you could defy your King and raze the city yourself.”

She knew that Jaina had almost done just that, of course.  Would have done, if Thrall and Kalecgos had not used everything they had to stop her. Everyone knew.  Jaina dropped her head into her hands, massaging her aching temples.  The barmaid arrived with a broom and dustpan and wordlessly swept up the shards of the wineglass, then went away again, still without a word.

“No,” Jaina muttered, defeated.  “That was the wrong thing, too.”

“Surely there is some middle road to walk.”

“Maybe there is.  But I can’t see it.  I don’t know what’s right anymore, only what’s wrong in the world.”  She raked her fingers through her hair; it was brittle and dry under her fingers, dead and colorless as the leaves outside that had also once been golden.  “I’m so tired of all this waiting.  Tired of fighting.  Tired of being angry....Light help me, Moira, I’m angry all the time, and I don’t know how to stop!”

A strange expression flashed across the dwarf’s typically impassive face; Jaina caught it, but could not read it.  It was a long time before Moira spoke again, and when she did, Jaina had to lean in close to hear her.

“When I returned to Ironforge, I returned  _marazul_ \--shattered.”   Moira stared into her cup as she spoke, as if searching for words in the dregs.  “My beloved Dagran was dead by my father’s orders.  My father was entombed, stone in the mountain’s heart, and with him all my hopes of reconciliation.  My people did not honor my claim as Queen; I had few allies and many enemies, and anger was my bread and beer and breath.  It sustained me and consumed me.  Not love for my young son; not hope for a better future.  It was anger born of grief, and it seemed limitless and black, like the darkness that lives deep beneath the earth.”  Moira grimaced.  “You may remember that I was not the best of leaders, then.”

_Scared little girls who run cities are dangerous and need to be stopped._  Words Jaina herself had spoken of Moira Thaurissian; they came back to her now with a sharp pang of guilt.  She thought of Theramore, and Dalaran, and fear.  The worst kind of fear: fear realized, the enormity and inescapability of loss.  Waking up every morning to feel its hollow reality creeping back; to know that more was likely coming, that the worst could happen.  That it had, and would again.

Moira continued, “When Varian set up the Council, I became even angrier than before.  But I realized I had not lost everything yet, and could stand to lose yet more.  My power, my son’s birthright, rested on choices I had not yet made.”

“How could you forgive them?” Jaina whispered.  “After everything they did…”

Moira lifted her head, meeting Jaina’s questioning gaze straight on.  “Who says I have?”

The two women stared at each other for a long moment; then, suddenly, Moira laughed.  Her laugh was not quiet at all; it rang out like a bell, and Jaina found herself echoing it, even if her own laugh sounded weak and rusty in her ears.

“Lady Proudmoore,” Moira said, her smile broad and brilliant, “I do not forgive.  And I’m still angry.”

Jaina’s answering smile felt a little more comfortable this time; then she grew serious again, worrying at the problem like a difficult spell she’d set herself to learn, unable to let it go until she grasped the puzzle at its center.  “What I meant was, how did you trust them?  When the Horde marched on Ironforge, the rest of your Council would not ride out to defend it, for fear that you would stage a coup.  But you trusted that the other clans would not do as they feared you would.  I respect that.”  She looked down at her hands, at the smooth new skin where Moira had healed her cut.  “I just don’t know that I could do the same, anymore.”

“Ah,” Moira said.  “But sometimes, you don’t have a choice.”  Jaina looked up with a frown, but Moira went on, low and passionate.  “What else could I have done?  Let Ironforge be overrun for the sake of my pride?  Refuse to help against the Horde?  I could not allow the dwarves to cause the fall of the Alliance.”  She spread her palms wide.  “I rode out that day with the Dark Iron not knowing if the Council would still have a seat for me when I returned.”

“So...you never trusted them.”

“It didn’t matter what I felt,” Moira said.  “It mattered what I did.  It was a leap in the dark.  A leap of faith, you’d call it.”

“I’m a mage,” Jaina said, with the wry start of a smile.  “It’s you priests who deal in faith.  But I think I understand.  I just still don’t know if I have it in me.”

“You don’t have to, right now,” Maura said.  “You’ll know when the time comes.”

_How can I have faith that I will have faith when I have no faith at all?_  A riddle, this time unsolvable by intellect alone.  Jaina shook her head.  “You’re right,” she said.  “The Alliance must stand together.  And I must find a way to wait.”  For justice; for faith; for a path through the limitless darkness that lived deep beneath the earth, and in all the hollow spaces in her heart.

“Aye.  To not choose is the hardest choice of all.”  Moira’s measured glance certainly held sympathy this time, and a hint of concern.  “Go home, lass,” she said, almost gently.  “Nothing to say you must do all your waiting here.  You’re a mage; it should be simple enough.”

“If only it were,” Jaina said, and closed her eyes against a sudden stab of loss.   _Theramore, gone_.  “I barely know where home is, nowadays…”

“Hm.  And your dragon, pray?  Shouldn’t he be by your side?”

“He had work to do,” Jaina half-lied, but Moira’s quirked eyebrow told her the dwarf didn’t buy it.  “We argued,” she admitted.  “He’s worried about me.  I told him I needed time.”  Kalecgos believed the best of her, though he had seen her worst; at times like these she couldn’t bear his faith in her.  It burned too bright against the rawness in her soul.

“You’re right about that,” Moira said.  “This war’s over, and you’re grieving.  The trial won’t start without you.  Get some rest.”

Jaina had known she was weary to the bone, with so many losses she could barely catalogue them all, but hearing it acknowledged in Moira’s plain tones released a knot inside her chest that she had long kept drawn tight.  As if she had needed permission for that weakness, and Moira had given it like the simplest of gifts.  Tears gathered in her throat like a tidal wave, and she swallowed hard, choking them down.  Rising somewhat unsteadily, she extended her hand to the dwarf woman.

“Thank you,” she said, and knew those unshed tears quivered in her voice; but it seemed all right that Moira should hear them, now.  “Moira Thaurissian, we haven’t been good friends before, you and I.  Perhaps it’s time to change that.”

Moira rose too, grasping Jaina’s hand firmly.  “Perhaps it’s time to change a lot of things,” she said; and then her rare smile flashed again, sudden and warm as a torch flaring in the dark.  “But as for this...I think we already have.”

*     *     *

As Jaina’s portal finally shimmered out of existence, the mage long departed to the lonely towers of Dalaran, Moira Thaurissian sat still at the bar in the Golden Lantern, gazing thoughtfully into her cup.

She had not stopped to explain the full connotations of the word _marazul_ to the human woman.  To shatter something could be to break it; but sometimes, hard stone had to be split to reach a precious vein within, to clear a way long blocked, to make a home.  When a person was described as _marazul_ , it meant that they had undergone great strain and change beyond their own control.  It was understood that such a shattering could release something that lay unseen within, or leave it marred; or sometimes both.

First the split; then the cutting.  And the wisest dwarves also understood that in the hands of the best craftsmen, a flawed stone could be shaped into a masterpiece of unique beauty.

Moira wondered whether Jaina Proudmoore’s shattering would reveal her value, or her flaws.  She wondered, too, what those around her might say her own shattering had wrought.

For a long time, she thought she’d known.  She knew what her father would have seen: a shape that did not match his hopes, too many rough edges, too many shadows clotted in her depths.  But Jaina had looked at her with such pleading eyes, as if Moira held the answers that would salve her desperate grief and teach her to forgive; and Moira found herself shaken by the human woman’s trust.

She thought of Jaina, the single golden lock of hair that shone among her shock-white tresses, her stubborn determination to know what was right in a world with no real answers, her rage born of the great love she’d had for all whom she had lost.  She thought of little Dagran, crawling through the halls of his fathers and chortling with joy at Uncle Muradin’s thunderous scowls.  She thought, also, of how a gem’s clouded core was sometimes found to be shot through with strange lights like stars, like a small universe that fit neatly in the palm of one’s hand.

Moira drained the last of her ale and stood up, a faint smile playing across her face.  Nothing was over.  Garrosh still lived.  The Horde would rise again.  And war would always come.

But even the smallest light in the darkness could lead you through.

**Author's Note:**

> I made up the dwarven word _marazul_ , but I based its invention on information I found in an online fan-compiled [Dwarf Language Primer](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VoIULr6evJqsszELhleCtkh690DvbP9w6dG0kjUiTos/edit). (I love geek culture for the fact that things like this exist.)
> 
> To Moontyger: I found this story during the pinch hit round and was disappointed to find that someone else had already claimed the pinch hit. When I saw that you signed up for Remix Madness, I was overjoyed! I love the original and the way you brought these two female leaders of the Alliance together, with their flaws, their anger, their strength, and their struggles to lead in troubled times. I wanted to explore Jaina's anger and grief in particular. In remixing it, I took their conversation apart a bit and put it in a slightly different order, but I kept or echoed much of your words because I did like the original so much. Thanks for writing it, and for giving me the opportunity to remix!


End file.
